[Mach13]

Gigabyte has come a long way, and now I can't stand other brands. Recently replaced my last mobo that wasn't Gigabyte with a Gigabyte one. Their Micro ATX offerings are awesome.

I shall trust you on this and pick a Gigabyte for my new HTPC (plus tiny bit of older gen pc game playing) rig. Just had a north bridge fan cease up on my many year (3/4?) 24/7 running Gigabyte Athlon setup. Had some fans from the dead boards to replace it with and it is still kicking! 8-) Besides they come is real pretty boxes... {grin}

Now if I can free up some funds for a new build, I am in. Too many hobbies here, know enough about each to be dangerous, but master of none. So advice from ye humble experts as yourself is greatly appreciated.

[Gryph]

I'm with you on the Gigabyte mobos Poofy; I swear by them
When I first built my HTPC - I had an ASUS board, and saw that when I'd occasionally reboot and accidentally have a USB drive in, the bastard would not boot. Just no end of problems.

Then I swapped to a MA770T-UD3P GB offering, and it was running absolutely brilliantly until last week always on 24/7, have an X2 550 BE, which with cpufreqd sits at 800Mhz until I start compiling then it fully kicks in, then I was doing a clean out (doing the usual dust clean), I well ... how do you put it without sounding like an idiot ... Hell ... I stood on it!

So, looked for a similar offering from GB, went with the 870A-UD3 ... Heck, worked in my favour, had 2 additional SATA ports I could use (which I did need) ... Plugged it in, seemed to have no problems just switching the mobo out under linux, had to change from ETH0 to ETH1 for network ... All fine ... Then, would you believe XBMC kicks in, the plasma starts flicking on and off.
Needless to say, here I am thinking it's a stupid conflict here and there ... Have a NV9500GT, purged drivers ... Yup, that's good ... Wait, kicks into XBMC ... still flashing.

So, I decide to rebuild ... Worst mistake EVER! Lets say 5 hours later and still looking at a flashing screen ... I take the punt, I *wonder* lets plug the HDMI from the GPU straight into the plasma ... Yup ... All good. Back into the Onkyo SR707 ... Helloooo flashing screen! Look at the receiver, hey ... that's flashing too!

Obviously, lets not go down the path of why it's doing it ... Here a xorg hack, there a xorg hack ... We get that working!
Now, with the old mobo, and having the 9500GT had to jumper the mobo s/pdif header to it to get the audio via HDMI. Alas, this doesn't work for the new mobo, so have to run an optical s/pdif as well.

So, thinking a GT430 to clear up that issue, and will future proof the system ... until I stupidly do something again.
So, your thoughts on that 430?

[poofyhairguy]

So, thinking a GT430 to clear up that issue, and will future proof the system ... until I stupidly do something again.
So, your thoughts on that 430?

Sounds like you need a GT210 or GT430.

[jaydash]

So what about a little more than "light gaming?" What video card would y'all recommend for 1920x1080 gaming with a i3/i5 system for more modern titles... a card that would still bit stream HD audio, HDMI, maybe even be 3D compatible?

I guess I'm not married to a micro-ATX board/case if a better video card required a larger board/case...

[poofyhairguy]

Then the sky is the limit. any high-end Nvidia GTX5xx series card works, like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814133370